Analysis: What could go wrong for Gavin Newsom? Plenty

1of2Gavin Newsom speaks at Willie Brown's annual breakfast at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018. Newsom is in the last few days of running his campaign for governor.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle

2of2Gavin Newsom speaks with reporters after a debate with Republican John Cox in October. The Democratic lieutenant governor beat the Republican in their race for governor the next month.Photo: Jeff Chiu / Associated Press 2018

Gavin Newsom starts his gubernatorial career as the political equivalent of a trust-fund baby. He’s been given a ton — a budget surplus of more than $14 billion and a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature — before his term even begins.

But despite that head start, Newsom will face many challenges after he is sworn in as California’s 40th governor at 12:02 p.m. Monday. One of every 5 Californians lives in poverty, and 3 million don’t have health insurance. Skyrocketing prices are putting homeownership out of reach for many, and the homeless population is spreading from cities to small towns. The public school system is among the most poorly funded in the country. Increasingly lethal wildfires threaten broad swaths of the state.

Given what Newsom has been endowed with, and the entrenched quality of many of those problems, his biggest challenge could be focusing his energy and political capital.

Paying for big ideas: Newsom says housing, homelessness and prekindergarten education are among his top initial priorities. None comes cheap.

Start with Newsom’s desire to have free preschool for all children whose families don’t make enough to afford private alternatives. Expanding the program that now pays for preschool for 175,000 children could cost the state about $1.3 billion over three years to cover an additional 100,000 children, according to Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, who has proposed legislation to do just that.

Then there’s health care.Early in the campaign, Newsom told the California Nurses Association convention in San Francisco that “you have my firm and absolute commitment as your next governor that I will lead the effort to get it done. We will get universal health care.”

The powerful nurses union has in mind a system in which the state would be the sole organizer of health care delivery, also known as the single-payer model or Medicare for all. But that ideadied in the Legislature in 2017 when no one could figure out how to pay its multibillion-dollar cost, and Newsom later tempered his enthusiasm for the approach, telling The Chronicle it would take years to get there.

“It is not an act that would occur by the signature of the next governor,” he said.

Instead, look for Newsom to start talking more about universal health coverage as an intermediate step toward a single-payer plan. It would be a cheaper option to implement, because it would involve covering the 3 million uninsured Californians, half of whom are undocumented immigrants.

Crafting homeless policies could be equally tricky. Newsom has promised to appoint a homelessness czar, but hasn’t said anything about creating an agency for that person to run, let alone how to pay for one.

Anti-homelessness strategies “are usually handled by counties and cities,” said Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco. “We need to try to figure out productive ways that the state can get involved. Is there anything we can do besides provide funding?”

And lawmakers will have their own priorities. They’ve introduced bills packing more than $40 billion in new spending in just the first few days of the new legislative session, far exceeding the expected $14.8 billion surplus.

“There will be some tension there,” said Anthony Reyes, a top aide to former state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León. Legislators “will feel emboldened after eight years of Gov. Brown reining them in.”

Working with the Legislature: Newsom knows policy backward and forward, but he isn’t as adept at the schmoozing, back-slapping part of part of politics. Those who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when Newsom was mayor commonly described him as aloof.

Newsom did little during his eight years as lieutenant governor to build alliances in the state Capitol. He spent much of his time working out of a shared space in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, 90 miles from Sacramento.

Newsom says he’s close to Ting and two other San Francisco Democrats, Assemblyman David Chiu and state Sen. Scott Wiener, as well as to state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. And Ting said Newsom has worked harder getting to know legislative Democrats in the past couple of years.

“It is something he was criticized for — not having a strong relationship with the Board of Supervisors — but he’s definitely made a significant effort to reach out to legislators,” said Ting, whom then-Mayor Newsom appointed in 2005 to be San Francisco’s assessor-recorder.

Newsom campaigned with legislative candidates up and down the state last fall, a strategy designed in part to build up favors that can one day be returned. And upon winning the election in November, the governor-elect began hiring people with bipartisan Sacramento experience.

Anthony Williams, who was policy director for former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, will be Newsom’s legislative affairs secretary. Ana Matosantos, who served as finance director under Brown and GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, will be Newsom’s Cabinet secretary. And Daniel Zingale, a veteran of the Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis administrations, will be his senior adviser on strategy and communications.

“He is staffing up with people who understand the Legislature and how it works,” Reyes said.

Brown’s parting gifts: Newsom inherits more than just a flush budget from Brown. The outgoing governor also left him two political time bombs in the form of his unfinished infrastructure projects: high-speed rail and the delta water tunnels.

Neither is politically popular. High-speed rail has been plagued by cost overruns, and there are questions about the long-term viability of both projects.

“He’s got to decide: How much of his political capital does he want to invest in these projects?” Ting said.

Newsom also must decide how to focus his desire to reform the way things are done in Sacramento.

Peter Wright, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco, said that “one of Newsom’s best qualities is that he’s really ambitious — that’s what California likes. But he’s got to rein that in.

“It’s like going into a well-run company and wanting to change things immediately just to do so. He can’t do that,” Wright said. “And that’s going to be very hard for him.”

Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, covering national and state politics. He has worked at The Chronicle since 2000 and in Bay Area journalism since 1992, when he left the Milwaukee Journal. He is the host of “It’s All Political,” The Chronicle’s political podcast. Catch it here: bit.ly/2LSAUjA

He has won numerous awards and covered everything from fashion to the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings to two Olympic Games to his own vasectomy — which he discussed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” after being told he couldn’t say the word “balls” on the air. He regularly appears on Bay Area radio and TV talking politics and is available to entertain at bar mitzvahs and First Communions. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and a proud native of Pittsburgh. Go Steelers!